California dad Sloane Briles allegedly threw his son overboard during a fight on a tour boat. (Orange County Sheriff's Dept.)

LOS ANGELES - The California dad who flung his 7-year-old son off a sightseeing boat Sunday was simply roughhousing with the youngster and regrets his "stupid" judgment, his girlfriend told the Daily News.

"There wasn't any fighting. He's just a goofball who's always roughhousing with his sons at the pool. He wasn't thinking," girlfriend Jennifer Burrelli, who witnessed the incident, said in an exclusive interview.

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She didn't deny that suspect Sloane Briles, 35, lifted his son over the side of the Pavilion Queen -- a power boat resembling a Mississippi River steamer.

"He was a little intoxicated, and he just had really stupid judgment," she said. "The cruise was over and slowly pulling in to the pier. I think he thought he could make his own rules. I think it was just teasing."

Burrelli said Briles immediately jumped in after his son and was only 5 feet away when the tyke was plucked out of Balboa Bay in Newport Harbor by a nearby pleasure boat. He was unharmed.

"His sons are his whole life," she said after speaking with Briles following the incident. "He would never ever do anything to hurt them on purpose. He knows now it could have gone badly. He doesn't even care about the arrest or his own name. He knows it was stupid."

Briles, of Irvine, Calif., was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment and resisting arrest after he struck his son and threw him overboard following a verbal argument with his girlfriend, Orange County Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

"Eventually the father jumped in, but the boy was already rescued by that time. So he didn't jump in immediately," Amormino told The News.

Briles, a former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps who served in Bosnia, eventually climbed back onboard the boat joining Burrelli, his younger 5-year-old son and about 80 other passengers, Amormino said.

He became so combative during arrest that deputies had to tackle him to the ground, Amormino said.

Burrelli disputed the sheriff's account. "We were not fighting," she said. "He was being aggressive with his affection, and I told him he was being crazy. That's all."

The 7-year-old boy was taken to a patrol station and released unharmed along with his brother to their biological mother.